Lower Leg Weakness

Lower Leg Weakness

Lower Leg Weakness can be feeling of weakness or objective presence of weakness.

Definition of Lower Leg Weakness

The lower leg weakness or the muscle weakness may means different meaning to different people.

What are the common causes of Lower Leg Weakness?

The common causes of Lower Leg Weakness which are non medical, non pathological and non organic in nature. The muscle is not genuinely weaker but rather only a feeling of fatigue or exhaustion.

Lower Leg Weakness | Muscle Fatigue: | the most effective way to treat is go and do some workout. The more you do the exercise the less tired you are.

Lower Leg Weakness | Muscle Fatigue | Malaise | the most effective way to treat is go and do some workout. The more you do the exercise the less tired you are.

Lower Leg Weakness: Muscle tiredness

This Lower Leg Weakness is sometimes called asthenia. It is a sense of weariness or exhaustion that you feel when using the muscle. The muscle isn’t genuinely weaker, it can still do its job but it takes you more effort to manage it. It is more of a psychological in origin or that you just simple don’t have the drive to push through.

This type of weakness is often seen in people who have chronic fatigue syndrome, sleep disorders, depression, and chronic medical illnesses such as the heart, lung, and kidney disease. It may be due to a reduction in the speed with which the muscle can get its energy supply, that the fuel refuse to comes in when it must work and push ahead.

Lower Leg Weakness: Lack of use

The Lower Leg Weakness due to from lack of muscle fitness(also known as deconditioning) is one of the most common causes of muscle weakness. It may occur as a result of an inactive (sedentary) lifestyle. If muscles are not used then the fibers within the muscles are partially replaced with fat. This is not a good news for the people who are lazy to do exercise. Muscle wasting will eventually occur: muscles become less chunky and more floppy. Each fiber is just as strong but there aren’t so many of them and they don’t contract so effectively. So, there is a decrease in the number of the muscle fiber. When you feel them they may be floppy and a little reduced in bulk. The tone is not there. The mass is lost. This leads to easy tiring when you try to do things that would have been easier when the muscles were fit.

The good news is that this condition is reversible with sensible, regular exercise regimes. It gets worse and more marked with increasing age. Aging is the culprit even if you exercise more in the elderly or when people are into their fifties, sixties.

Muscle power is greatest and recovery times are shortest in our 20s and 30s. This is why most great athletes are in this age range. Once crossing into the thirties, most professional athletes have retired. Not many Olympian are in this age. However, building of muscles through regular exercise can be done at any age.

Not that many successful long-distance runners are aged over 40. Muscle tolerance for prolonged activity such as marathon running remains high for longer than the powerful, short-burst activities like sprinting.

It’s always good to stay fit, whatever your age. Recovery from muscle and tendon injury, however, also becomes slower with increasing age.

You must always gives sufficient time for warming up before a vigorous exercise. Always start with a regime suitable for a new starter or appropriate for the age group. At whatever age you decide to improve your fitness, a sensible training regime is essential. You need advice from trainers or physiotherapists, to prevent injury to muscles which, at least at first, may not perform as well as you hope.

Lower Leg Weakness: Ageing

As we age, our muscles tend to lose strength and bulk and they become weaker, causing Lower Leg Weakness. Whilst most people accept this as the natural consequence of age – particularly great age – it is frustrating to be unable to do the things you could manage when younger. However, exercise is still beneficial and it is still possible to increase muscle power and strength with a careful and safe exercise routine.

My personal experience is that exercise even for a short time in the morning or evening helps to tone up the muscle and training it , tuning it to have a higher level of energy.

Injury recovery times are much longer with great age, balance is often impaired and thinner bones are easily broken. So, supervision is sensible, especially at first.

Lower Leg Weakness: Muscle ‘fatigability’

Some Lower Leg Weakness or muscle tiredness is mainly muscle ‘fatigability’ – the muscle starts off normally but tires very quickly and takes longer to recover than normal. This is rather a pathological condition.

This often goes with muscle tiredness but is particularly seen in some uncommon conditions such as myasthenia gravis and myotonic dystrophy. There is a true pathological muscle exhaustion.

The difference between these three types of muscle weakness is often vague and you can have more than one of them. You can also progress from one to another. However, working out which one is the main problem can help doctors work out what is causing it. This is because some conditions tend to cause one type of weakness rather than another. A proper investigation need to be carried out in order to get the exact diagnosis.

Lower Leg Weakness: Other Common causes of muscle weakness

Lower Leg Weakness: Infections

All kinds of infection robe you the energy level and thus feels more tired or fatigued/Lower Leg Weakness.

Lower Leg Weakness: Pregnancy

During or just after a pregnancy, a high levels of steroids in the blood, together with a tendency to be lacking in iron, can cause a feeling of Lower Leg Weakness/muscle tiredness. The anemia cause a decreased oxygen carrying capacity and hence the energy that can be supplied in time. This is normal in pregnancy and whilst some exercise is still sensible, when pregnant you need to be particularly careful when exercising. Remember you are carrying a weight on the front. This can lead to lower back pain if you don’t adapt what you do to take account of your altered posture.

Lower Leg Weakness: Persistent (chronic) diseases

Many chronic diseases commonly cause Lower Leg Weakness/muscle weakness. In some conditions this is due to reduced blood and nutrient supply to muscles. All kinds of arterial diseases, metabolic diseases like the diabetes, kidney diseases or lung diseases affect the body energy level.

Anxiousness cause Lower Leg Weakness: generalized tiredness /Lower Leg Weakness can be caused by anxiety. This is due to over-activity of the body’s adrenaline (epinephrine) system.

Depression cause Lower Leg Weakness: general weariness and a feeling of generalized tiredness /Lower Leg Weakness can also be caused by depression.

Note: anxiety and depression are both conditions which tend to cause a sense of tiredness and ‘fatigability’ rather than true weakness.

Any prolonged pain cause Lower Leg Weakness: a general effect on energy levels/Lower Leg Weakness can result from chronic pain. Like anxiety, it stimulates the production of chemical substances (hormones) in the body which respond to pain and injury. These chemicals lead to feelings of tiredness or fatigue. In chronic pain, true weakness can result, as muscles may not be used due to pain and discomfort.

Muscle damage through injury cause Lower Leg Weakness

There are many ways in which your muscles can be directly damaged causing Lower Leg Weakness. This is objective in origin. The most obvious is injury or trauma such as sporting injuries, pulls and sprains. In any muscle injury, bleeding from damaged muscle fibers occurs inside the muscle, followed by swelling and inflammation. This makes the muscle weaker and also painful to use. The pain put the leg hesitate to use full force. Localized pain is the primary symptom but weakness also results.

Medicines cause Lower Leg Weakness

Many medicines can cause Lower Leg Weakness/ muscle weakness and muscle damage as a side-effect or an allergic reaction. Usually this begins as tiredness or fatigue. Medicine alter the metabolism of the body and its energy production and delivery.

The nicotine of the smoking can indirectly weaken muscles cause Lower Leg Weakness. The mechanism of smoking is by narrowing of the arteries, leading to peripheral arterial disease thereby less amount of oxygen can reach the leg.

Cocaine misuse or abuse can causes marked Lower Leg Weakness/muscle weakness, as can many other drugs of abuse.

Sleep disorders cause Lower Leg Weakness

Any lack of or reduced sleep lead to Lower Leg Weakness, or a generalized increase in tiredness, including muscle ‘fatigability’. This can include:

Pure case of insomnia

Any anxiety

All kind of depression

Chronic pain.

Restless leg syndrome

Shift work.

Having to baby sit babies who don’t sleep through the night.

Medical condition causing weakness or Lower Leg Weakness

Primary or true muscle weakness causing Lower Leg Weakness

This Lower Leg Weakness shows itself as an inability to perform what you want to do with a muscle, even the first time you try. There is a true pathological dysfunction or organic causes present. There is a true reduction in the force which the muscle can exert to carry out its work, however hard you try. The muscle is just not working properly despite all the effort and forces you wanted it to work. – it has become abnormal.

When this kind of weakness occurs the muscles are often floppier than usual and reduced in bulkiness. The muscle mass shrink in size and can visibly see it clearly. It can happen, for example, following stroke. It is also seen in a condition called muscular dystrophy (discussed further below). Both of these conditions result in a real change in muscle power.

Lesser causes of Lower Leg Weakness

There are many lesser cause of Lower Leg Weakness but do not warrant our attention because there are very medical in nature and in any way there simple too rare.